Subtitles and Transcript

Christopher Emdin

0:12
Right nowthere is an aspiring teacherwho is working on a 60-page paperbased on some age-old education theorydeveloped by some dead education professorwondering to herself what this taskthat she's engaging inhas to do with what she wants to do with her life,which is be an educator,change lives, and spark magic.Right now there is an aspiring teacherin a graduate school of educationwho is watching a professor babble on and onabout engagementin the most disengaging way possible.Right nowthere's a first-year teacher at homewho is pouring through lesson planstrying to make sense of standards,who is trying to make sense of how
to grade students appropriately,while at the same time saying to herselfover and over again,"Don't smile till November,"because that's what she was taughtin her teacher education program.Right now there's a studentwho is coming up with a wayto convince his mom or dadthat he's very, very sickand can't make it to school tomorrow.On the other hand, right nowthere are amazing educatorsthat are sharing information,information that is shared in such a beautiful waythat the students are sitting
at the edge of their seatsjust waiting for a bead of sweatto drop off the face of this personso they can soak up all that knowledge.Right now there is also a personwho has an entire audience rapt with attention,a person that is weaving a powerful narrativeabout a worldthat the people who are listeninghave never imagined or seen before,but if they close their eyes tightly enough,they can envision that worldbecause the storytelling is so compelling.Right now there's a person who can tell an audienceto put their hands up in the airand they will stay there till he says,"Put them down."Right now.

2:27
So people will then say,"Well, Chris, you describe the guywho is going through some awful trainingbut you're also describing these powerful educators.If you're thinking about the world of educationor urban education in particular,these guys will probably cancel each other out,and then we'll be okay."

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The reality is, the folks I describedas the master teachers,the master narrative builders,the master storytellersare far removed from classrooms.The folks who know the skills about how to teachand engage an audiencedon't even know what teacher certification means.They may not even have the degreesto be able to have anythingto call an education.And that to me is sad.It's sad because the people who I described,they were very disinterested in the learning process,want to be effective teachers,but they have no models.I'm going to paraphrase Mark Twain.Mark Twain says that proper preparation,or teaching,is so powerful that it can turn bad morals to good,it can turn awful practices into powerful ones,it can change men and transform theminto angels.

3:37
The folks who I described earliergot proper preparation in teaching,not in any college or university,but by virtue of just being in the
same spaces of those who engage.Guess where those places are?Barber shops,rap concerts, and most importantly,in the black church.And I've been framing this idea
called Pentecostal pedagogy.Who here has been to a black church?We got a couple of hands.You go to a black church,their preacher starts offand he realizes that he has to engage the audience,so he starts off with this sort of wordplayin the beginning oftentimes,and then he takes a pause,and he says, "Oh my gosh, they're
not quite paying attention."So he says, "Can I get an amen?"

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Audience: Amen.

4:20
Chris Emdin: So I can I get an amen?
Audience: Amen.

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CE: And all of a sudden, everybody's reawoken.That preacher bangs on the pulpit for attention.He drops his voice at a very, very low volumewhen he wants people to key into him,and those things are the skills that we needfor the most engaging teachers.So why does teacher educationonly give you theory and theoryand tell you about standards and tell you aboutall of these things that have nothing to dowith the basic skills, that magic that you needto engage an audience, to engage a student?So I make the argument that
we reframe teacher education,that we could focus on content, and that's fine,and we could focus on theories, and that's fine,but content and theorieswith the absence of the magicof teaching and learning means nothing.

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Now people oftentimes say,
"Well, magic is just magic."There are teachers who,despite all their challenges, who have those skills,get into those schools and are
able to engage an audience,and the administrator walks by and says,"Wow, he's so good, I wish all
my teachers could be that good."And when they try to describe what that is,they just say, "He has that magic."

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But I'm here to tell youthat magic can be taught.Magic can be taught.Magic can be taught.Now, how do you teach it?You teach it by allowing peopleto go into those spaceswhere the magic is happening.If you want to be an aspiring
teacher in urban education,you've got to leave the confines of that universityand go into the hood.You've got to go in there and
hang out at the barbershop,you've got to attend that black church,and you've got to view those folksthat have the power to engageand just take notes on what they do.At our teacher education classes at my university,I've started a project where every single studentthat comes in there sits and watches rap concerts.They watch the way that the rappers moveand talk with their hands.They study the way that he
walks proudly across that stage.They listen to his metaphors and analogies,and they start learning these little thingsthat if they practice enoughbecomes the key to magic.They learn that if you just stare at a studentand raise your eyebrow about a quarter of an inch,you don't have to say a wordbecause they know that that
means that you want more.And if we could transform teacher educationto focus on teaching teachershow to create that magicthen poof! we could make dead classes come alive,we could reignite imaginations,and we can change education.